LIVING GREEN: Your environment and your wallet

Saturday

May 30, 2009 at 12:01 AMMay 30, 2009 at 9:30 AM

Check out plant sales in Scitate and in Marshfield next weekend.

The Scituate Garden Club will hold its annual plant sale Saturday, June 6, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on the grounds of the Mann House on Greenfield Lane in Scituate. In addition to perennials and annuals, there will be a horticultural-themed raffle and guided tours of the wildflower garden. Held rain or shine. For more information, call Faith at 781-545-1188.

The Y’ise Gardeners of Marshfield will hold its annual sale of perennials Saturday, June 6, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Ventress Library, on Route 139 in Marshfield.

MONEY SAVER: As economy worsens, neighbors buy and share gear

Twice a year, in the spring and in the autumn, six families on Vicki Matranga’s tree-lined Oak Park, Ill., block go to one neighbor’s garage and bring out the $1,200 woodchipper they all pitched in to buy. Then they gather around and feed it dead branches gathered from their yards.

“We chip up our branches and make our own mulch out of it,” Matranga said.

Financially, it was worth it for Matranga and her neighbors to pool their dollars and buy a big-ticket item that none would use regularly but all still needed yearly, she said.

This one small example of neighbors sharing an item is part of a trend as the economy worsens, experts say. People are turning to sharing and trading – using community toy, bicycle and tool libraries, swapping vegetables online or checking out exotic cake pans from libraries, instead of buying their own.

“With the economy tanking, there are even more people doing it now, and it’s more visible,” said Jeff Ferrell, a sociology professor at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas.

“People are looking for ways to save money. If you have too many tomatoes and you have too many oranges, wouldn’t it be great if we can meet each other?” Anderson said.

Elsewhere around the country, dozens of municipalities and nonprofit groups have community tool sheds, where citizens can borrow hand or power tools for projects.

These types of sharing and swapping systems aren’t all that different from the way society worked through the mid-20th century, when family members lived near one another, said Rosemary Hornak, a psychology professor at Meredith University in Raleigh, N.C.

“Sharing only means that you have to buy less and I have to buy less,” Ferrell said. “Sharing also knits communities together. Sharing is good for social life.”